Have you ever experienced a relationship ending?
No matter whether it’s between friends, lovers, family members, siblings or work colleagues, the ending of a soul based relationship with someone we love and care for, can be heart wrenching and soul defining.
My life can be summed up in three accounts:
I was raw. I was cooked. I was burned.
– Rumi –
Just this last week, I experienced a breakup with a close friend whom I have known for over 7 years. It was one of those things that started as a small misunderstanding, and ended up becoming an all-consuming grass fire that eventually devoured the relationship within its own breath. It was not a pretty site … especially for someone who prides himself on having a high level of emotional intelligence.
While the beginning and ending of soul level relationships can be the most defining moments in our lives, they also have the capacity to evoke some of the most important personal lessons that we need to learn as human beings.
So in reflecting on my experiences over the last week … here’s my take on the 8 lessons I’ve started to learn:
1) The Good Never Disappears
As I contemplated my own situation, feeling as though 7 years of shared experiences, happiness, experience, feelings and connectedness had suddenly been wiped away overnight, my higher guidance started to chime in. It began to remind me, that while we may perceive ‘everything as lost’, that the good that we contribute both consciously and unconsciously to our relationships is never lost.
In the world of physics, we know that energy is never lost, it simply changes form. The good news is that in the spiritual realm, all of our good deeds, experiences, contributions and love never disappears. Instead it is accumulated in the form of grace. A spiritual bank account that serves as the foundation of our true character, and from which we can draw hope, strength and courage in our future moments of need.
Therefore, we are reminded to acknowledge the good that we have done, the laughter that we have shared, and the experiences that brought delight to the hearts of those we have loved.
2) One Day We’ll All Be the One In the Box
Towards the end of last week, I had the privilege to attend the funeral of an uncle who recently passed away. It was a wonderful celebration of a life well lived. However, as I listened to the eulogy of this great man, and deepened my understanding of the impact he had left in the world, I couldn’t help but contemplate that one day we will all reach the same place. One day we’ll all be the one in the box.
As a platform medium I know too well the grief and loss that people suffer and go through when a loved one passes. Yet the knowing that we will all die someday provides us all with a very relevant and grounding perspective from which to evaluate our lives.
So, as I sat looking at that casket, I realised that all of the my need to be right, all the feelings of hurt, loss and grief – were just not worth carrying anymore. Because one day we will all be the one in the box, and in the greater scheme of life – carrying our ego’s baggage to the grave just ain’t worth it.
3) Feel Your Feelings Fully
As a transformational coach, hypnotherapist, intuitive and healer I’ve seen first-hand how we human beings love to keep our feelings and emotions hidden. Sometimes we will do anything to run away from fully feeling our deepest emotions, from indulging in alcohol, to drugs, to binge eating, to having to take prescription medication.
However, often these very emotions that we run away and hide from are the very ones that will teach us our greatest lessons. Instead of being the little boy who stands in a pile of freshly made doggy-doo and then puts a sock over it to pretend it didn’t exist, maybe what we most need is to seek the support, help and love of those around us that can help us move through our feelings, process them, gain the lessons and then help us wash them away and let them go.
4) Sometimes We Just Have to Change the Water
I’ve been recently looking after a friend’s house on the Mornington Peninsula. An avid gardener and creative she had left me some celery, spinach and lettuce cuttings in a jug of water in the kitchen. Only problem was when I finally came to use them, all of the water in the jug had gone bad and needed to be replaced.
Sometimes our relationships in life can be the same. While we may be comfortable with the current situation or circumstances, the actual water and spirit that brings our relationships alive has gone stagnant. What we need in those circumstances is a change of water, a change of scenery or a change of environment. Failing to create change and flow, means that what we once considered stable and safe, may soon become stagnant and old. Life requires life. Flow requires flow. Love requires Love.
5) Soul Relationships Are Our Greatest Teachers
It’s no coincidence that the breakups and rejections we feel the most are usually with those we value the most. All of us have agreed and brought people into our lives to be the actors and mirrors that teach us our greatest life lessons. Some will come to teach us resilience, others how to love ourselves unconditionally, while those who frustrate us most may be teaching us lessons of patience and understanding.
The key to healing in these relationships is to have the courage and willingness to look beyond the others person’s behaviour in the physical, even if we don’t fully understand their motives, or why they decided to breakup with us, and to instead seek to view our lives from the source of our true spirit – our higher selves. Often, we will then see that what we thought was troubling us, was not the situation or person themselves, but the perspective from which we were looking at it. We will discover that the real challenge is not in the situation itself, but in our attitude towards it.
6) Search for the Moments of Blessing
Have you ever woken up one day only to find yourself constantly being reminded of your partner’s shortcomings, issues and weaknesses rather than what initially attracted you to them in the first place?
When the relationships we value end it can be easy to focus on the loss, to get caught in disappointment and lost in resentment. After all, we feel justified in seeing that we were wronged at the mercy and benefit of the other.
But what if we could just stop for a moment and ask “What is love seeking for me to understand and know in this moment?”
Maybe we might just find that in the depth of our despair, sorrow and grieving exists the doorway to our greatest destiny and soul lesson. Maybe we might just discover that our soul has planned this divine dance with the other all along – and that now is the time to surrender and release our attachment to the entire experience to higher source, and to trust that in finding the blessings in this moment, something even better will unfold for all involved.
7) We May Never Understand – But We Can Still Choose to Love
From personal experience this insight is often the hardest. Because while we may not ever know the reasons why someone acted a certain way, decided to leave us or failed to love us in the way we expected, we still have within us the power to decide whether we will choose to play the role of the victim or the creator.
While time eventually heals all wounds, it takes courage and self-awareness to have the capacity to simply let go of our ego’s need to know why someone acted the way they did.
It’ often said that “Resentment is the poison we drink hoping that the other person will die”.
And in this light, we come to understand that the more we hold onto the pain, grief, anger and resentment, the more we suffer ourselves.
In each moment we have the capacity to invite love back into our hearts. To surrender the old and allow the new to enter. But just as you cannot fit new clothes into a wardrobe that has already been filled, so too we need to make room in our hearts for grace, love and a new dawn to re-enter.
8) Seek the Help You Need
Whichever way we look at it – as human beings we need other people. From the moment we are born, to the moment we take our last breath our lives revolve around the relationships that we hold most dear to our heart. It’s why the High School Musical hit says it so well – “We’re all in this together!”.
Asking and seeking the help we need when relationships go south is never easy, especially for us men who often find it hard to speak up, share our feelings and to enter states of vulnerability. Yet that is exactly what we need to do to move through the darkness and to find the breaking of the new dawn that so desperately seeks to find us once more.
We also now know that unresolved emotion creates energetic blockages, leads to tremendous shifts in hormonal imbalance, creates inflammation and eventually can lead to dis-ease.
Therefore, self-nurturing and self-care is fundamental on the road to rebuilding our lives again. Which is why this week alone I’ve already booked in a Reiki healing session, am seeing a dear friend for some one-on-one coaching and counselling, am getting back into my running and yoga practice. And yes, I might even head into the gym and hit the punching bag just to knock out any last elements of anger, resentment and hurt!
So in Summary …
Just as we live in a world of seasons, so too every relationship will go through its springs, its winters, autumns and summers. Some seeds planted will shrivel, while others will sprout and prosper, based on the environment, conditions and nurturing that we provide. Some gardens will grow and flourish, while others will close. How we choose to embrace each of these experiences is entirely up to us.
If there is anything I’ve learnt from the experience of the last week, is that I am blessed to have such loving family and friends in my life. Each of them is the reflection of who I am at the essence of my soul. Each of them is a reflection of the relationship that I have with myself.
And so even in the midst of relationship turmoil I am being shown and mirrored in some way to work deeper on building the unconditional love, self-acceptance and self-worth of myself.
In all ways, even in the depth of our greatest hurt, there is a light that is always burning within, the source of our great spirit that says “I love you”, “You are more than enough” and “This too shall pass.”
Les Price is a transformational life and business coach, hypnotherapist, intuitive, medium and healer. If you feel you have been holding onto limiting patterns, emotions, feeling and blockages from the past that no longer serve you, and are looking for a safe environment to allow greater freedom and liberation into your life – contact our office to organise a consultation with Les.
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